The ‘Social’ app category has the highest display IVT rate on iPhones (10.1%) and iPads (12.6%)

The ‘Weather’ app category has a 40.2% video IVT rate on iOS smartphones

The ‘Music’ category has a video IVT rate of 35% but a display IVT rate below 10%

‘Social’ has highest IVT rate for iOS display

Fake social media profiles have dominated the news cycle in recent months. Twitter recently deleted millions of fake account, per the New York Times. Advertisers are also impacted by invalid activity on social platforms.

The chart below shows the IVT rates for the five most popular iOS smartphone app categories in terms of programmatic display advertising.

Over 10% of ads on ‘Social Networking’ apps are invalid

The ‘Social Networking’ category was the only iOS smartphone app category that has a display IVT rate over 10% in the time period we investigated.

‘Music’ and ‘Games’ combine to account for over 40% of the display ads

The ‘Music’ and ‘Games’ categories ranked third and fourth in terms of IVT, respectively, and they have the two highest programmatic display ad share of voice (SOV) figures. The ‘Music’ category accounted for 21.1% of programmatic display ads served to iOS smartphones, while the ‘Games’ category has a 20.2% SOV.

When it comes to video advertising on iOS smartphone devices, marketers need to pay special attention to the ‘Weather’ and ‘Music’ categories. Our data reveals that those two App Store categories are rife with ad fraud.

The chart below shows the IVT rates for the five most popular iOS smartphone app categories in terms of programmatic video advertising.

Fraudsters are raining on your video ad budgets

The ‘Weather’ category has a 40.2% programmatic video ad fraud rate on iOS smartphones in the time period we investigated. This was the highest rate among all Apple App Store categories, including those that didn’t rank in the top in terms of ad volume.

‘Music’ category has 3.5x higher video IVT compared to display

Programmatic video ads in the ‘Music’ category on iOS smartphones have an IVT rate of 34.8%. This rate was over 3.5x higher than the display ad fraud rate in the same category (9.4%).

Ad fraud on ‘Social’ apps impacts marketers on iPads as well

The ‘Social Networking’ app category has the highest display IVT rate on both iOS smartphones. The same was true on iOS tablets, where the ‘Social’ app category has an IVT rate of 12.6%.

The chart below shows the IVT rates for the five most popular iOS tablet app categories in terms of programmatic display advertising.

Fraudster didn’t crack the ‘Weather’ code on iOS tablets

While the ‘Weather’ category has the highest video IVT rate on iOS smartphones, it has a relatively low (5.1%) IVT rate for display advertising on iOS tablets. There is no built-in weather app on iOS tablet devices.

‘Games’ ranked third in IVT, but first in ad volume

The ‘Games’ category has the third-highest display IVT rate, at 8.3%, but its ad SOV was massive, at 83.5%.

Ad fraudsters found great success in the ‘Music’ app category on all iOS devices. The chart below shows the IVT rates for the most popular iOS tablet app categories in terms of programmatic video advertising.

‘Music’ has video IVT rate 2x higher than any other category

The ‘Music’ category has a video IVT rate of 37% on iOS tablets, which was over 2x more than the next-closest category (Entertainment, 18.2%).

‘News’ ad fraud rate was much lower on iPads compared to iPhones

The ‘News’ category has a video IVT rate of 5.5% in the time period we studied on iOS tablets. This was about half as much as the IVT rate on iOS smartphones for the ‘News’ category (10.2%).

Get more insights in our Q2 2018 Programmatic Quality Report

Pixalate analyzed billions of programmatic ad transactions to update you on the current state of invalid traffic (IVT) and ad fraud in the marketplace. To learn more about our methodology and insights, download your copy of the Q2 2018 Programmatic Quality Report here.

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Disclaimer: The content of this blog reflects Pixalate’s opinions with respect to the factors that Pixalate believes can be useful to the digital media industry. Any proprietary data shared is grounded in Pixalate’s proprietary technology and analytics, which Pixalate is continuously evaluating and updating. Any references to outside sources should not be construed as endorsements. Pixalate’s opinions are just that - opinion, not facts or guarantees.

Per the MRC, “'Fraud' is not intended to represent fraud as defined in various laws, statutes and ordinances or as conventionally used in U.S. Court or other legal proceedings, but rather a custom definition strictly for advertising measurement purposes.”

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